Sterile light washes over the briefing room. The holotable now holds a station map and a fresh dispatch stamp. Marr sits cuffed, jaw tight, while the last of the purged terminal memory blinks dead.
Veylan Marr
You think this ends with me. It does not. The rot is above me.
Sion moves in, keeping the pistol low and the cuffs visible. Amelia and Melissa watch from opposite sides of the room, both alert, both waiting to see which truth survives.
Melissa Hartwell
Give him the name. If you have one, this is the moment.
Veylan Marr
It was a high commander. One with access to sealed audits and quiet deletions. I moved freight, codes, and people because I was told to preserve the order they wanted.
Amelia Potter
So it reaches command level after all.
Marr’s eyes flick to the dispatch stamp, then back to Sion. The room hangs on the edge of a report, an arrest, or a cover-up.
Sion
The name is the key.
Melissa is the only High Commander in the GPO
“(Melissa is the only High Commander in the GPO)”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled -1)
Marr’s accusation hangs under the strip lights, and Sion pieces it together fast. Melissa Hartwell is the High Commander he means.
That changes the room at once. Amelia goes still, and Melissa’s attention sharpens into something colder than surprise.
Melissa Hartwell
If he is naming me, then he is trying to buy distance with half-truths. Keep him contained.
Amelia Potter
So the breach sits at the top, not the edges.
Marr slumps back against the chair, the fight draining from his shoulders as the deduction lands on him too. The dispatch stamp glows beside the station map, suddenly less like paperwork and more like a sealed warning.
The room settles into a hard, procedural silence. Sion has the name, and now every report in the chain will have to carry it.